Land Of The Free, Home Of The Brave
by defyinggravity121
Summary: It's the autumn of 1942, and the racial, social and political tension in the air has everybody in Lima, Ohio stretched just shy of a breaking point. Things are shaken up and relationships are tested even more when a mysterious newcomer arrives in Lima with more then one frightening secret hidden beneath his mask- secrets that threaten to uproot the entire town.


Hey everybody! My name is Jessica, and I'm really excited to be posting here! Excuse me if there are no paragraph breaks...I'm writing off of an iPad right now, and it keeps deleting the paragraph breaks. Please don't let it distract you from the story! (I'm going to try to fix it as soon as I can...) Reviews are much appreciated! - Santana Lopez was not in a good mood. McKinley High had changed their schedule. They changed their stupid schedule, and now Santana was going to have to to have to walk home every day from school and pass her, with her bouncing blond ponytail and sky-blue eyes. When she saw her, there was something that happened inside of her, something painful and sharp and sweet all at once. Something that Santana had never felt when she saw anyone else. Maybe that girl had some sort of magic pull on her or something. Maybe she was a witch. Or maybe she was just pretty. Maybe she was just pretty and sweet and kind enough to smile and wave at Santana when she passed her after school that day. Maybe she didn't care that Santana went to Lima Heights High and she went to McKinley. Maybe she didn't care that Santana was... colored. Or maybe Santana was just being a complete idiot. Why did she do this to herself all the time? She's a girl- Santana couldn't like her. It didn't make an ounce of sense. She felt like such a fat-head. Santana pounded up the concrete stairs into her bedroom, which was as neat as a pin except for the sheets. They were messy and disheveled from her not-so-brief encounter with Matt Rutherford last night. She smiled at the memory of his eyes, filled with longing for the taste of her lips. She couldn't help it- she was like a cat. She played with her prey before she ate it. Especially the handsome ones. Then she remembered the girl's kind, blue eyes, and she almost doubted herself again. But Santana caught herself. She was the school share crop- the men loved her. She couldn't let herself be distracted from something as important as sex and popularity. She couldn't. She sighed and began making the bed. After Santana was done, she pulled open the ratty curtains and stared at the brick wall side of the house behind her own. Just to stare at something, without feeling too awkward. Because, god knows, more awkward wasn't something she needed. But as she stared at the brick wall, afternoon sunlight oozing into her small, cramped room, Santana saw something she never guessed she'd see here, in Lima Heights. A shadow crossed the wall, then flitted away. She leaned closer to the window as the shadow reappeared. Someone was behind her house. Slowly, Santana backed out of her room, then tore down the ratty carpet of the house, cigarette smoke burning her lungs. The door to the (empty) house was thrust open, and she bursted outside, panting. (Running in Mary Janes and a dress was sure as hell not as easy as Santana sometimes tried to make it look.) She dashed around the side of her small house, then slowly turned to face her pathetic "backyard", wondering apprehensively what she was about to find. Just a red brick wall and a lot of scrubby, dying weeds. Santana rolled her eyes and sighed. Trust her to make up something as half-baked as that. The real criminals only came out at night. Who knows, maybe it was just her imagination. She lived in Lima Heights, for god's sake- there was no excuse for her to be scared of a shadow. But as she turned, she saw it again, out of the corner of her eye. A shadow. Santana crept around the corner of the house again, careful not to make a sound. Her legs were cut and scraped by the sharp, tall weeds, but at that moment, she didn't care. Whoever the hell was sneaking around her house was about to get it good. Yet as she approached the place where the shadow was, an awful sound floated into her ear, angry and desperate. Crying. What the hell?... As Santana turned the opposite corner, she saw a girl slumped against the side of her house, sobbing into her hands. Her long black hair draped over her shoulder, and her knees were pulled up to her chest. She didn't see Santana. Santana stood there for several seconds, unsure of what to do. Her first instinct was to kick that girl's ass out of her yard, but something deep inside of her, the same something that ached when Brittany Pierce walked by, told her that that would be exactly the wrong thing to do. So she didn't move. She barely breathed. She just stood there and watched this victim of human cruelty weep into her palms. After several minutes, the girl looked out at the street and sighed a choking, watery sigh. Any second, she was going to turn and see Santana and then she would be dead...so Santana took a step back, turning on her heel and running back, back to her house, where she would never be forced to deal with friendship drama. Santana couldn't deal with something like that. How was she supposed to? How could anyone expect her to? As soon as she got inside, Santana slammed the front door behind her and sank down to the ground. The only reason that she wasn't just like that poor girl outside was because she slept around so much, and she knew it. But, ironically, the kids in Lima almost respected you if you were that kind of girl. At least, the kids in her school did. Sometimes Santana wondered if it wasn't the same with the white kids. If was just a human thing rather then a colored thing. But if she ever said that aloud, god knows those white kids-and their parents- would probably eat her alive. It was just a shadow, after all. / Kurt was going to start his first day at school in Lima in twelve hours. He was literally dying a slow death of nerves and fear and excitement. The mirror in his bedroom had heard his "I'm new here, where do I get to...?" speech too many times, listening to the utter lie in each word masquerading as truth. Kurt was too nervous to even go into the kitchen and listen to the war news on the radio, which was completely out of character for him. His dad seemed to sense his growing apprehension when Kurt didn't come down for dinner at 8:15. (He always began dinner at 8:15, on the dot. Kurt was pretty sure that's how his Mom used to do it, too, so that was probably why.) Kurt could hear his dad's heavy work books clomp down the stairs to his basment bedroom, and shouted a harried "come in" before Burt even had the chance to knock. He entered, surprised. "Did you hear me coming?" he said in Kurt's native tounge of German. Kurt nodded and stayed where he was, stiffly seated in front of his vanity mirror. Boxes of cold cream and hair gel lay next to each other, still unpacked. Truthfully, Kurt was still way too strung out to be unpacking anything. Not his record player, not his clothes, not my posters of jazz musicians. Even the American flag he had always done his father the honor of hanging on my wall was still packed away in one of those boxes. Burt noticed this right away and sensed that something was wrong. "Why haven't you unpacked yet?" "No reason," Kurt heard himself say tensely, staring himself down in the mirror. "Just haven't gotten to it yet." His dad slowly descended the stairs, keeping his eyes at Kurt's back the whole time. It was as if Kurt was a bomb he was afraid would go off at any second, lest he bother or annoy him. And maybe Kurt was. He had definetly been on edge lately, more so then before they had moved from South Carolina. Burt sat down on the edge of Kurt's bed, eyeing him carefully. "Is something...bothering you?" Kurt shrugged and turn to face him. "Well, maybe it's the fact that I'm going to public school for the first time since last spring, Dad. Remember what happened the last time I went to public school?" He practically spat the words in his father's face. "Before you decided to move us out here to Nowhere, Ohio so you could open a car shop. Really? There's a war going on out there, Dad. People are not going to be buying cars." "So they'll want their cars fixed. It's not a place where you buy them, Kurt- it's a place where you repair them." Burt's voice was staying incredibly, somewhat ironically calm. "It's going to be fine. I promise." He leaned in closer to Kurt, speaking in a hushed tone even though they were the only ones in the house. "And you know it's for your own safety." Kurt took a deep, shuddering breath and opened the lid to his cold-cream box. After pulling the small glass jar with the COLD CREAM label on the side, he unscrewed the lid, lifted up his bangs, and began applying the sticky, white gel to his face. "I'm sorry. I overreacted." "It's all right. I get it, you're nervous. I would be too, especially after going through what you did. And getting ready to do what you're about to do." Kurt nodded tersely, continuing to rub the cold cream into his cheeks. After several minutes of watching Kurt smooth what, to Burt, looked unnervingly like lard onto his face, he left. He didn't say anything, but he didn't need to. He just patted Kurt reassuringly on his shoulder gently and left. As soon as he was gone, Kurt reached his hand into the bottom of the box and pull out a photograph. It wasn't very old, taked perhaps a year or two before, but the edges were already frayed from Kurt clutching onto it so often, and bumping around in the cold-cream box. There was once something written on the bottom left corner, but it soon became smudged beyond legibility. The only words Kurt could ever make out were "summer" and "ago". He sighed and ran a hand through his chestnut-brown hair, staring at the boy in the black-and-white photograph. He looked like he was about how old Kurt was when the photo was taken, maybe thirteen or so. He had got dark hair and twinkling eyes, and his smile lit up the area around him more then the camera flash. He sat in the grass with his back against a tree, looking carefree and happy. Of course, it was more then likely taken before the war began. Everyone had a lot more to be carefree and happy about back then. Kurt shook his head and set the picture back down on the top of the cold-cream box. He had been using it as a sort of escape from the pain of everyday life ever since he found it, right after that fateful day the previous spring. It had been one of the not-so-good days, when Kurt was intolerant and close to losing it every time anybody opened their mouths. He had stormed out of the house in an angry huff after his father had made an insensitive mark about something. Angry tears streamed down his face in rivets, and Kurt was breathing hard by the time he reached the beach, a five-minute walk from where he and his father lived. It was then, sitting on the sand, watching the waves roll up against the shore, that he found it. When Kurt first noticed it, half-hidden in the sand next to him, he passed it off as a piece of trash and forgot about it. But it didn't want to be forgotten-it kept creeping into his mind without him noticing, like a shadow. One that didn't have a person attatched to it yet. So Kurt picked it up, dusted it off, and found the shadow's person. The boy in the photo. From that point on, he kept the photo in his pocket. Whenever he got close to exploding in anger or bursting into tears, Kurt remembered him, and he soothed him. He was there when Kurt's dad found out about what had happened, he was there when they packed up and moved to Lima. It was almost like having a friend. And God knows Kurt needed one...especially now. 


End file.
